Nest Cam IQ review: Face recognition, for a price

Our Verdict

The Nest Cam IQ is a step to a higher place Nest'southward previous models, offering excellent sound, practiced to very good video quality and intelligent, intuitive software. However, information technology'south expensive, and requires a cloud subscription to admission your video history and other key features.

For

Splendid audio quality
Very skillful video quality
Intelligent Familiar Confront detection
Well-designed, intuitive software

Against

No local storage
Primal features, including video history, require cloud subscription

Tom'southward Guide Verdict

The Nest Cam IQ is a footstep above Nest'southward previous models, offering excellent audio, good to very good video quality and intelligent, intuitive software. However, it'south expensive, and requires a deject subscription to admission your video history and other primal features.

Pros

+
Fantabulous audio quality
+
Very good video quality
+
Intelligent Familiar Face detection
+
Well-designed, intuitive software

Cons

-
No local storage
-
Key features, including video history, require deject subscription

Nest'south newest security photographic camera – the Nest Cam IQ – looks a lot like the Nest Cam Outdoor. However within, Nest has made a number of changes, including higher image resolution, better dynamic range and significantly improved sound compared with the previous model. Nest's app has some absurd new tools, such as facial recognition, making it one of the all-time Google Home compatible devices around. What hasn't changed is its ease of employ and comprehensive features – and the lack of important services, including video history and Activity Zones, unless yous subscribe to the company's cloud service.

Editor'due south notation (Aug. 2021): Nest has discontinued the Nest Cam IQ. In its place is the Nest Cam (battery), which has a 1080p photographic camera and includes for gratis three hours of rolling video storage as well as person, animal, and vehicle detection. For more details, delight check out our Nest Cam (bombardment) review.

Nest Cam IQ: Design

The sleek Nest Cam IQ is a solid, well-constructed white polycarbonate device about 5 inches alpine. Its conical camera caput, 3 inches in bore, rotates 180 degrees horizontally and 160 degrees vertically on a thin 1.5-inch leg, but stays firmly in any position you place the head. The three-inch disk base is nicely weighted, helping to go along the camera in place on horizontal surfaces.

Alerts are signaled by an eye-catching electric-blue ring light that encircles the black camera bevel, plus a small-scale status light under the camera. Two-mode sound is provided via a three-microphone array to the left of the lens and a speaker that's on the dorsum. 2 940nm infrared LEDs on either side of the lens provide good illumination for dark capture.

The IQ has no local storage and no batteries. Its x-human foot ability cable plugs into a big circular cake that spreads out to obscure an side by side electric outlet.

Nest Cami IQ: Move and sound detection

Nest has fabricated a few nice additions to its intelligent, customizable motion and sound detection. Even so, cardinal features such as Activity Zones, sound analysis and Familiar Face detection are bachelor only if y'all subscribe to its cloud service (more on pricing below).

One of the prissy new features is that the camera automatically zooms in on the surface area of the room where an activity has been detected, which makes it easier to quickly identify the source of the alert. Text and email notifications include a screen capture of that zoomed-in view. Still, if the activity is near the periphery of the frame, it often doesn't trigger the zoom.

If yous subscribe to the Nest Aware cloud service, when the app detects a face up, information technology will inquire you to name who it is. These stored Familiar Faces are used to place the individual who triggers an warning when you receive notifications. In our tests, the software was very skillful at recognizing most people whose faces we had named.

Nest claims the IQ can distinguish between people and pets; still, nosotros frequently received person alerts when our cat Rascal passed through the dining room. Unlike detected homo faces, the software has no manner to teach the camera to recognize Rascal. Similarly, though the new sound analysis supposedly distinguishes betwixt a person speaking and a canis familiaris barking, it failed to recognize barking even when our dog was within three feet of the microphones.

Nest Cam IQ: Video and audio quality

The IQ'due south ane/two.5-inch, 8-megapixel (4K) CMOS sensor with 12x digital zoom has a significantly higher resolution than previous Nest cameras and compares favorably to the Arlo Pro's 720p videos. In addition, the IQ's firmware combines daylight video files to create a high dynamic range (HDR) epitome. The result is a very adept quality daylight 1080p video that is clean, crisp and bright with meliorate detail in the shadows.

When in nighttime way, the 2 940nm LEDs apply an infrared cut filter that doesn't emit the telltale carmine glow that gives away many other cameras. They provide a nice level of illumination fifty-fifty in a completely dark room, though with some vignetting forth the periphery of the 130 degree field of view. Nosotros were able to easily recognize faces in our night fashion videos, though movement tends to be blurred.

Recorded sound and live two-way communication are dramatically improved in this model. The three-microphone array combined with the new noise suppression and echo counterfoil produces audio that is loud, clear and distinct, regardless of the person'southward position in relation to the camera. While the speaker is on the back of the camera, its sound is clear and easy to understand, enabling smooth conversation via the mobile app to and from the photographic camera.

Nest Cam IQ: Cloud storage

While Nest has added a few useful features to its Nest Aware cloud service, information technology remains a poor solution for the user. That'south considering afterward the one-month costless trial, you will have no continuous recording, Familiar Face up detection or Activity Zones unless you lot pay a monthly fee. Well-nigh important, unlike the Arlo Pro, the IQ has no local storage, so yous will also have no access to your video history. Instead, you will be able to view merely snapshots from the by iii hours.

MORE: Tiptop-Rated Wireless Home Security Cameras

Nest updated its Nest Aware cloud storage plans for its home security cameras and video doorbell; now, for $half-dozen per month (or $60 annually), you can store thirty days of event history from an unlimited number of cameras at one location; if you upgrade to Nest Aware Plus ($12/month, $120 annually), you lot get sixty days of rolling deject storage, plus 10 days of 24/7 video history.

Nest Cam IQ: Installation

The Nest Cam IQ'south simple, trouble-complimentary installation follows the manufacture standard of downloading the app to your phone and scanning a QR lawmaking (conveniently on the base of the device) to pair information technology to the software.

Most other cameras require being placed near your network hub for installation and so moved to their monitoring location, which can sometimes cause network connection problems. The IQ tin can be plugged in where you want it and and so installed. The app immediately found the photographic camera.

Nest Cam IQ: Mobile apps & spider web portal

The Nest software is piece of cake to navigate and understand, and the features tend to be deep and intelligent. For example, the interface for scheduling the times when your camera is on or off is both flexible and convenient, allowing you to set a number of periods within each day of the week or set the same catamenia for several days at once. Similarly, you tin define several irregularly shaped Activity Zones by but dragging on the eight nodes of the shape.

The iPhone and Android mobile apps are clean, with only a handful of icons. Most controls are centralized in Settings. Automobile rotate betwixt the horizontal and vertical views is responsive, every bit is the two-finger pinch/spread, which takes advantage of the 12x digital zoom.

The web portal is just equally accessible and well-designed. All the same, given the portal'due south extra screen real estate, it offers better viewing of timeline details. Other differences in the portal (compared to the apps) include greater command over clips and the ability to define and manage Activity Zones. On the other hand, Family sharing of the camera is enabled only through the mobile app.

Finding specific events in the library and (if yous subscribe to Nest Aware) playing back the related video is very piece of cake. Both also display dots color-keyed to defined alerts, such as motion or audio detected within a defined Activity Zone. Release your mouse or remove your finger to play the video from that indicate onward.

Subscribers can also save a clip of the selected video from the apps and the portal.

Still, the portal has more functionality in editing and managing the clips. In the portal, y'all can you set the beginning and terminate points of the saved video, also as download your clip, link to it and share it to Facebook, NestDoor or Twitter.

Across integrating with Nest's Smart Domicile products, the IQ also works with the best Google Domicile smart speakers, Wemo, LiFX, SkyBell and the Echo Show. That compares favorably with the Arlo Get, which integrates with SmartThings, Flash, Telguard, Stringify, IFTTT and Alexa. However, Smart Home integration for all security cameras is still evolving, with new protocols existence added by most vendors on regular basis.

Nest Cam IQ Indoor: Verdict

The Nest Cam IQ has very expert twenty-four hour period time image quality (it'south pretty proficient at nighttime, also), excellent sound, and its software is 1 of our favorites among security cameras. Even so, it's expensive -- $100 more previous Nest cameras, too every bit our favorite outdoor camera, the Arlo Pro.

In addition, given that access to your video history is a main purpose behind having a security camera, the IQ's lack of whatsoever local storage forces the user to pay for a monthly cloud plan. For those ii reasons, the Netgear Arlo Pro cameras are a amend deal, but the Nest Cam IQ is besides worth your consideration.

Sally Wiener Grotta is the president and lead annotator of DigitalBenchmarks examination lab (world wide web.DigitalBenchmarks.com). The scripts she created for various tech publications for testing and evaluating digital cameras, prototype quality, software and related technologies have become industry standards. Among her numerous books is the starting time major book on image processing "Digital Imaging for Visual Artists" (McGraw-Hill), co-authored with Daniel Grotta. Her hundreds of reviews, stories and columns take appeared in scores of magazines, journals and online publications.